AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 47 / 59

Plate 47 of 59 · Cold War · Short-haul airliner

Hawker Siddeley Trident

Trident 2E, painted as G-AVFB, a Hawker Siddeley HS.121 Trident 2E delivered to British European Airways in 1968, leased to Cyprus Airways as 5B-DAC from 1973, damaged by gunfire at Nicosia in 1974 and returned to British Airways in 1977, flown by British Airways until 1982 and flown into Duxford on 13 June 1982 for the Duxford Aviation Society: BEA’s 1968 ‘Red Square’ scheme with a white upper fuselage and tail, a charcoal window band running the full length of the fuselage and over the black radome, a red flash along the lower fuselage sides widening aft beneath the Spey nacelles, red leading edges on the wings, the red BEA square with white italic ‘BEA’ on the fin, ‘G-AVFB’ in white on a black fin-cap band, ‘Trident Two’ in black on the fin-root fairing, Union flags and ‘Hawker Siddeley Trident Two’ titles behind the cockpit and red blanks in the three intakes, as it is displayed at IWM Duxford.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-AVFB, a Hawker Siddeley HS.121 Trident 2E delivered to British European Airways in 1968, leased to Cyprus Airways as 5B-DAC from 1973, damaged by gunfire at Nicosia in 1974 and returned to British Airways in 1977, flown by British Airways until 1982 and flown into Duxford on 13 June 1982 for the Duxford Aviation Society: BEA’s 1968 ‘Red Square’ scheme with a white upper fuselage and tail, a charcoal window band running the full length of the fuselage and over the black radome, a red flash along the lower fuselage sides widening aft beneath the Spey nacelles, red leading edges on the wings, the red BEA square with white italic ‘BEA’ on the fin, ‘G-AVFB’ in white on a black fin-cap band, ‘Trident Two’ in black on the fin-root fairing, Union flags and ‘Hawker Siddeley Trident Two’ titles behind the cockpit and red blanks in the three intakes, as it is displayed at IWM Duxford. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.6 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (1C/2E/3B); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Trident 2E modelled here.

History

The Trident 2E

The Trident began as the de Havilland DH.121, chosen in 1958 to meet a British European Airways requirement for a jet to replace the Viscount and Vanguard on Europe’s busier routes. As first designed it would have carried 111 passengers behind three Rolls-Royce Medway engines, but BEA, expecting a slump in traffic, had it cut down in 1959 to about a hundred seats and the smaller Spey. The result fitted BEA’s routes almost exactly and few others, and the Boeing 727, launched a year later to the larger specification, went on to sell more than 1,800 against the Trident’s 117. The prototype, G-ARPA, flew from Hatfield on 9 January 1962, by then under the Hawker Siddeley name, and BEA began Trident 1C services in April 1964.

The layout was new: all three engines in the tail, the centre one fed by an S-shaped duct from an intake at the base of the fin, a high T-tail, and a nose undercarriage set two feet to port of the centreline so that it could retract sideways and leave room for a forward hold. The Trident was the fastest subsonic airliner of its day, cruising at around 600 mph, and it was built from the start for automatic landing, with the triplicated Smiths Autoland system that made the first automatic touchdown on a scheduled passenger flight at Heathrow on 10 June 1965. Within a few years Tridents were landing in fog that grounded everything else at the airport.

Fifteen Trident 1Es with a bigger wing went to export customers, then came the 2E of 1967, with a longer span, more fuel and Spey 512 engines for BEA’s longer routes, and the stretched 3B of 1969 with a small Rolls-Royce RB.162 booster engine in the tail for take-off. The surprise export order came from China, whose state airline CAAC bought thirty-three 2Es and two Super 3Bs in the 1970s, the first Western airliners bought by the People’s Republic. BEA passed into British Airways in 1974, and the airline flew its last Trident services on 31 December 1985, by when the type was too noisy and too thirsty to keep. The Chinese Tridents, latterly with the air force, lasted until 1995.

This airframe

Trident 2E G-AVFB

G-AVFBThe airframe modelled

G-AVFB was the second of the fifty Trident 2Es ordered by BEA; it first flew at Hatfield on 2 November 1967 and was delivered on 6 June 1968. From 1973 it flew for Cyprus Airways as 5B-DAC, and in July 1974 it was caught at Nicosia by the Turkish invasion, where two of the airline’s Tridents were destroyed and this one was damaged by gunfire. It stood at the abandoned airport until it was repaired and flown back to Heathrow in May 1977, then flew British Airways’ London to Manchester services until it was retired in 1982 with 21,642 hours and 11,726 landings. It was flown into Duxford on 13 June 1982 for the Duxford Aviation Society’s British Airliner Collection and was repainted in 1990 in the BEA colours it had been delivered in. The model shows it as it stands at Duxford today: BEA’s 1968 “Red Square” scheme, with a white upper fuselage and tail, a charcoal window band running the full length of the fuselage and over the black radome, a red flash along the lower fuselage that widens aft beneath the Spey nacelles, red wing leading edges, the red BEA square on the fin, “G-AVFB” in white on the black fin-cap band, “Trident Two” on the fin-root fairing, Union flags and “Hawker Siddeley Trident Two” titles behind the cockpit, and red blanks in the three intakes.

See it at IWM Duxford

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Trident 2E in 4 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 59 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.